Why 10 Asinine Trends Might Still Matter

Earlier this week, I posted on our 360 Digital Influence team blog about Mark Simon's piece in AdAge titled "Beyond the Hype: The 10 Most Asinine Trends Online and Why You Should Ignore Them") and about the type of counsel I think we should be offering to our clients.  My main point is that we need to focus more on relevance instead of shutting down innovation and experimentation by dismissing new ideas as just hype and nothing more. 

It's a good read so check it out and let me know if you think I'm on the right track, or if I'm just succumbing to the hype myself. 

Comments

[Bob Warfield]

My problem with Simon's post isn't even so much that he is dismissing potential channels due to hype. Rather, it is that I have a sense he's allowing his own tastes and preferences to enter into the decisionmaking without considering that he may not be an appropriate arbiter--a mistake that is all too easily made by marketers.

My belief on things like Twitter and Video (now that you mentioned video) is that there is way too much Love/Hate smoke out there for something interesting not to be going on. It's fascinating, for example, to watch what happens when someone who has traditional pursued one style switches to another. We have long time blogger Robert Scoble's relatively recent injection of lots of Video and Twitter as a great example. Much of his traditional audience is put off, but a lot of new people are saying what took you so long?

This led me to formulate a theory of Web 2.0 Personality Styles. It's really interesting to see what happens when you start thinking this way. See my blog post that introduces the idea:

http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2007/08/29/web-20-personality-types/

Then take a look at something like how Fred Thompson's web presidential campaign maps to this notion:

http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2007/09/07/twitter-and-fred-thompson-leverage-web-20/

Or look at how successful Web 2.0 companies map:

http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2007/09/03/what-personality-type-is-your-web-20-fave-part-2-of-web-20-personality-types/

There's something to this that the Marc Simon's of the world are in real danger of missing if they mistake differing (and conflicting) styles for just hype.